Imminent Islam

I have a vague idea I may have written on this subject here before. But the scenario looks even more likely to me today than it did then (whenever that was).

I consider it highly probable that the mainline Protestant churches will convert, en masse, to Islam. Very likely within my lifetime.

Here’s my reasoning.

At this point in history, it’s pretty clear that liberal Protestants consider insulting Islam the most serious sin in the world. That’s because all Islamic terrorism stems from the Muslims’ righteous outrage at being insulted by us. They themselves are not culpable in any way. It’s all our fault, for insulting them.

Well, what insults Islam more than anything else? I’d say it’s the Christian doctrine that Jesus is God. God has no son, Muslims say. It’s an offense and blasphemy to suggest such a thing. Jesus (whom they call Issa) was a great prophet, and they revere Him. But not the Son of God.

Here we see a confluence of doctrines. Many liberal Protestant theologians (I’d bet even a plurality) believe pretty much the same thing about Jesus. They don’t believe in the virgin birth. They don’t believe in the Incarnation. Jesus, in their view, was a great human teacher, whom we revere. But that’s all.

In other words, they’re pretty close to being Muslims already.

But there’s another point of convergence.

For generations, liberal theologians have told us that Jesus’ mission was not to save us from our sins and reconcile God to man. Jesus, they have proclaimed, was a preacher of pacifism. Pacifism was His whole mission. Whatever makes for peace is a fulfillment of Jesus’ true gospel.

“Islam” means peace. The peace that comes from submission to Allah and his law.

Conversion to Islam will be packaged as a foolproof plan for world peace. Once everyone has submitted to Islam, there will be peace over the whole world.

Why wouldn’t a liberal church agree to that, bearing in mind that they don’t believe in Jesus’ divinity anyway?

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11 thoughts on “Imminent Islam”

“Why wouldn’t a liberal church agree to that, bearing in mind that they don’t believe in Jesus’ divinity anyway?”

Because Muslims are very explicit about God having given humanity rules that need to be obeyed and enforced. Liberal churches, on the other hand, aren’t very big on enforcing rules other than “thou shalt tolerate everything done by everyone, except for the traditional values that are intolerable”.

That might be the case in the absence of a threat. But a threat, I think, changes everything. Also, I think you underestimate their shame at being Western Imperialists, and their desire to expiate that sin.

Your reasoning doesn’t reflect reality as much as it does a desire to conflate things you see as a threat. It’s a convenient rhetorical strategy if you don’t mind caricaturing people you don’t agree with. You can make Mainline Protestantism, which you oppose, seem far worse by connecting it to Islam, which you set up as the ultimate threat.

I disregard all statements of firm principle from mainline Protestants. That’s not because I consider them liars — lying implies intent. It’s just that they change their principles with the social winds, and are generally unaware of it. I remember mainline Protestant seminarians vowing to me that they would never! never! accept homosexual ordination. They eventually became advocates for homosexual ordination and marriage. Again, this wasn’t a lie. It was an honest statement of subjective feeling, from people who reinvent themselves every decade or so.

Whether or not you disregard the statements of Mainline Protestants doesn’t change the fact that the reasoning in your post is based on caricature. And looking around at the trainwreck of our social and political discourse, I’ve come to believe that caricaturing those with whom we disagree is a form of bearing false witness.

And whatever your views of me, my fellow Mainliners, or Muslims, surely we are all better served by honest, reality-based assessment than we are by conjuring up fantastical scenarios that put our own complete rightness, and our enemies’ total wrongness, in starkest relief.

1) Your first point is absolute caricature. Yes, some Mainline Protestants speak out against some forms of insult against Islam. That is a very far cry from saying that Mainline Protestants view insulting Islam as the world’s most serious sin, and believe that terrorists have no culpability for their violent actions. That is a blanket and completely inaccurate (at best) characterization even of those Mainline Protestants who are most ill at ease with Muslims being insulted.

2) You can’t lump a billion Muslims together and make a blanket statement about what most insults them, but based on historical events and interpretations of Islamic law, Christian trinitarianism is not the most serious form of insult. Yes, trinitarianism is a crucial point of difference between Christianity and Islam, but most Muslims are not in fact insulted by it. The greatest insult is usually seen as overt and intentional blasphemy against Muhammad.

3) Insofar as Mainline Protestants disbelieve Jesus’ virgin birth and divinity, but value his teaching and prophetic voice, they have some level of common ground with Islamic conceptions of Christ, though differences remain. But similarities of theology and praxis exist across all kinds of religious groups, and it takes a lot more than a somewhat similar point of theology to spark mass conversion.

4) Your characterization of liberal theology as pacifism is an inaccurate blanket statement and a caricature.

5) Even for those who conceptualize peace/pacifism as the cornerstone of Jesus’ message and the defining feature of their faith and theology, it is a huge (and usually unfathomable) leap to embrace Islam.

Assessing the threat of radical Islam and terrorism and doing our level best to meet it is incumbent on us. Understanding and evaluating interpretations of Islam, and acquainting ourselves with the beliefs and circumstances and lives of Muslim communities and individuals across the world is also a really good idea. But Islam functions as a bogeyman in our society outside those issues. It plays the role of the great evil to which we connect all little evils to convince others that our enemies are as bad as we think they are. There’s an Islamic Godwin’s Law where we start conflating everyone we don’t agree with with what we assume to be the greatest evil: Islam. People on both sides of religious and political aisles do it–I’ve raised similar objections to the musings of liberals and Mainline Protestants who make comparisons between conservative evangelicals and the Taliban, based on both groups having a complementarian view of gender, viewing homosexuality as aberration, and wanting religious values to shape the law of the land. But saying that evangelicals are going to become Muslims because of those similarities isn’t a serious or honest assertion. It’s a way of defaming a group by associating it with another group that you view as even worse.

So yes, I took issue with motive and rhetorical strategy rather than the content of your argument. I did that not because I’m trying to personally attack you, but because I think that is a more salient and serious issue than the substance of your argument, which isn’t fact-based.

Meanwhile, the latest Dabiq addresses the (apparently) confusing issue of “why do they hate us?”

We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah – whether you realize it or not – by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son, you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices. It is for this reason that we were commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you.
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So you can continue to believe that those “despicable terrorists” hate you because of your lattes and your Timberlands, and continue spending ridiculous amounts of money to try to prevail in an unwinnable war, or you can accept reality and recognize that we will never stop hating you until you embrace Islam.

Reply to Mainline Protestant: Very good. This is more substantive. Yes, I am making broad generalizations. But I see a future in which a) more and more westerners will be forced to choose between conversion to Islam or death (or at least dhimmitude), and b) Islam becomes extremely fashionable. My observation of mainline Protestants is that they always embrace what is fashionable. I argue that their theology offers insufficient distinctives to motivate them not to convert.